Damaris Dominguez's future began to look a little brighter when an administrator at the El Paso Independent School District helped her pay for GED exams two years after she was kept from enrolling in high school.

Other former students who shared stories with the El Paso Times earlier this year about being forced out of school as part of a districtwide cheating scheme are still waiting for the chance to improve their lots in life.

Four months have passed since the El Paso Times published their accounts of being targeted in a cheating scheme hatched by former Superintendent Lorenzo García that inappropriately failed and passed some students a grade level and drove others out of low-performing schools with little regard for their futures.

The school district has begun efforts to find students affected by the cheating scheme and help them finish school. But the challenge is clear for the city's largest district, which has lost touch with many of the students it cast out. Though school officials have reported successes in their outreach efforts, they admit they have also struggled in trying to find students using years-old contact information.

About 60 percent of the more than 500 former EPISD students that the district set out to contact this month could not be found, according to the latest tallies provided by the school district.

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Administrators said that while not all of the students fell prey to the cheating scheme, they were chosen because the district could not identify a reason why they left school or they were listed as having returned to their home countries -- two common patterns seen at Bowie High School, which served as the model for other campuses trying to game the federal accountability system.

Mark Mendoza, the district administrator in charge of efforts to find students who might have been victimized and get them back in school, said the district still has work to do to make sure that students are getting the services that they deserve.

"It is a significant number that we have not been able to locate because they have moved, but that's why the hotline and the notoriety that have come from the situation are so important, because we are out there looking for them, but we also want them to know they can contact us," Mendoza said.

He said the district is using the students' last known addresses while they were in school. Mendoza said he had not considered other methods of finding the students, such as background searches available online, but he plans to propose the option to the district's interim superintendent.

Contacting students

Efforts to contact students who were involuntarily pushed out through the cheating scheme have taken shape in several initiatives, Mendoza said.

The first attempts started in August -- months after the El Paso Times began reporting details of the cheating scheme -- with the names of 17 Bowie High School students who district officials believed might have been targeted. Then the school district began reaching out to students who called a hotline and others whose stories were highlighted in the Times.

The school district this month began combing through 2009-10 student leaver records for students who dropped out of any of its high schools or were listed as having returned to their home countries. Those records reflect students who did not return during the 2008-09 school year -- the same year the district rewarded several administrators with bonuses that were tied to state and federal accountability measures.

In December, district employees looked at data for more than 700 students who dropped out of high school or left to return to their home countries. Mendoza said they narrowed their search to about 500 students after finding that some of those students had graduated, earned a GED, entered foreign exchange programs or moved to other public schools in the state.

But employees, who visited 60 homes a day this month, have found fewer than 200 of those students, and only half have accepted help from the district, according to documents.

Mendoza said once his staffers contact a student, they offer options that include returning to high school, attending night and weekend courses at a nontraditional campus, online courses, and GED assistance. He said that the district has also worked with students who have needs that are not part of the services typically offered.

Dominguez was one of those students.

Mendoza paid $100 out of his pocket for Dominguez to take GED exams at El Paso Community College.

"He personally paid for the tests," Dominguez said. "The district didn't do it. He did. He also told me that if I needed help filling out the financial aid forms for college, to let him know."

Dominguez was 18 years old when she was not allowed to enroll at Austin High School in August 2010, according to documents obtained by the El Paso Times through the state's Public Information Act. She said campus administrators told her that she might be better served at a charter school or alternative education campus because she was 18 and did not speak English.

Mendoza, then the pupil services director for the school district, directed the campus principal to enroll Dominguez and reported concerns to then-Chief of Staff Terri Jordan and James Anderson, the assistant superintendent of high schools. But Dominguez never enrolled at Austin High and did not earn her GED.

Now, Dominguez said, she has taken all but one of her GED exams. She continues to work at a grocery store, but she said she now has a renewed hope that she can enroll in college to study engineering.

"It's no longer going to be a barrier," Dominguez said.

Grisel Avalos, whose three sons were pushed out of Bowie High School, said Wednesday that the district had yet to offer her sons help to earn their diplomas even after a former Bowie High assistant principal told the El Paso Times that he helped to kick them out of school as part of the cheating scheme.Ê

"They want to go back but they also say, 'How are we going to do it, Mom, because now we have to take care of our children?' " Avalos said. "They have to work to take care of them and then try to study, but they do want to go back. The bad part is they lost a lot of time because of the bad that was done to them."

Noely Hernandez, another former Bowie High student interviewed by the El Paso Times in August, also said early last week that she had not been contacted by anyone at the school district. Hernandez said the school district had contacted her sister about returning to EPISD and also called her husband's mother to ask whether he was interested in going back to school.

But Hernandez, who felt pressure to leave the district in 2009, said she had not heard anything about her case.

"I still want to return to school," she said. "Even more so now because my husband was the one working and now he doesn't have a job, so it's harder."

Mendoza said his staff attempted to reach Hernandez and the Avalos family but were unable to contact them. The day after an interview with the El Paso Times, Mendoza scheduled a January meeting with Hernandez and her husband. He also spoke with the father of the Avalos brothers over the telephone and asked that they contact him.

"In any operation like this there is still a responsibility on the part of the person that wishes to be helped," Mendoza said. He added, "If you feel that we haven't contacted you for whatever reason, come demand it because it's your right."

Scope of search

Much has changed at the EPISD since the El Paso Times began reporting details of the cheating scheme after obtaining thousands of documents through the state's Public Information Act.

Some administrators who participated in the scheme have been forced out of the district, which long denied any wrongdoing.

Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams began the process of stripping the power of the school board after he said it lost the trust of the community it serves.

Williams appointed a conservator who has the final say on all district matters. He is also seeking federal approval to replace the current elected school board with an appointed board of managers. In January, the state auditor will begin investigating the Texas Education Agency's failure to catch the cheating scheme two years ago.

Efforts to help former students who were targeted as part of the scheme are key as the school district seeks to repair its image and regain the trust of the community it failed, said former state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh.

Shapleigh, who alleged two years ago that the school district was "disappearing" students to game the state and federal accountability systems, has said that hundreds of youngsters who were pushed out of low-performing schools in the district deserve help from the EPISD. He said that help could include paying tuition at El Paso Community College.

"So many of these young students do not trust the district," Shapleigh said. "They were kicked out of school in very trying times. Some now have children and they're out of jobs, and many now, they are in their 20s, and need to go to community college or communities in schools, not EPISD. Recovering these students is a case-by-case job."

Shapleigh's latest comments have put him at odds with Mendoza, who said the former senator is overstating the number of students affected by the scheme. Mendoza said he approached Shapleigh at a school board meeting and asked him to share any information he had on students who needed help. He said Shapleigh simply told him to look at the lists of students who have left the district's schools.

"I confronted Senator Shapleigh outside of the boardroom and I said, 'If you have kids' names, give them to us because I want to put those kids in,' " Mendoza said. "I was really disgusted that anybody would hold on to names just to make a political point and not let us help the kids. You can make your political point by saying, 'Look, I delivered these names to you. I found them.' "

Shapleigh said he handed over any lists with names on them to the FBI and he is counting on the federal agency to share the information with the U.S. Department of Education. He added that the students and the community will not start trusting the school district again until the board of managers takes over.

"Telling Mark Mendoza to go track the leaver data, that's as good advice as I can give him. It's his data," Shapleigh said. "Getting the leaver data and tracking it, it will take you to the students that have been taken out of the educational setting -- legal or illegal."

Mendoza said he took Shapleigh's advice and combed through the data but has not found the hundreds of students to whom Shapleigh refers as being ousted because of the cheating scheme.

The El Paso Times on Nov. 1 requested "reports that document the progress of the efforts, information on the options available to and selected by the students, documents that detail the dates and attempts to reach individual students and former students, any statement provided by the students, and documentation that outlines the scope, time and resources spent on the effort."

A response from the district about a month later included two presentations that had already been provided to the school board or the interim superintendent and general information on staffing costs and various phases of the student recovery project.

The school district had spent nearly $38,000 in staff hours on its attempts to recover students who were pushed out because of the cheating scheme before December, according to a general breakdown provided in the documents. The breakdown does not give exact interactions but instead estimates how many hours it would take to reach out to 151 students.

Also included was a master student recovery list, which excluded former students' names because of federal privacy guidelines and which documented efforts only through Nov. 30.

The list did not include the requested dates of when district employees reached out to former students and in some cases did not offer a clear understanding of the help the school district was providing or offer information on whether the district followed up with the students whom it was initially unable to reach or those who refused services.

The El Paso Times has requested a similar breakdown for the month of December.

Lionel Rubio, a former principal at Bowie High who spoke at a past school board meeting about concerns he had that the district was not reaching out to students, said he has been encouraged to hear from former students who told him that they were recently contacted. He said he is waiting to hear an updated report on recovery efforts that is scheduled for January.

"It's a good sign to see that contacts are being made," Rubio said. "There's got to be a contact. There's got to be the encouragement and the continued motivation to have those students take the initiative. Then, there needs to be a follow through."

Mendoza said the school district is forging new ways of reaching out to students because of the unprecedented circumstances. He said that his staff is doing the best it can with the resources it has but that he does not pretend to have all the answers.

"We are responding to a situation that should never have happened," Mendoza said.

Mendoza said he has a request for the community.

"If there are community members out there who know of kids we haven't reached, this is not a game of hide-and-seek, these are people's futures," Mendoza said. "If somebody knows of somebody, I think it's the responsibility of any community member, if we've missed somebody, we're here to help. Let us know."

Zahira Torres may be reached at ztorres@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.

Whom to call

Students, parents and community members who know of someone who was affected by the cheating scheme may call the school district at 351-5210.